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           What if one day you woke up to find out that your parents created you. Not in the normal sense either; they chose what you were going to look like and what your strengths and weaknesses would be. Your parents made you like a science project. How would this affect you?

           

            Making the creation of designer babies illegal can stop this and other negative things from happening. Thing like this should not be allowed, since when did having a baby become a project? Isn’t this supposed to be something natural that occurs in your life? You fall in love, get married, and have children; where in this equation does it say go to a doctor and pick out every last trait of your child to make them the “perfect” baby. And in that case perfect in whose eyes? Yours?

            Let’s first start off by explaining what exactly a designer baby is. A designer baby is a “baby whose genetic make-up has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designer_baby) Pretty much genetic engineers and parents pick specific traits that they want their child to have thru different methods the engineers can alter or pick the genes that contain these traits. These different methods are “sperm sorting, pre-natal diagnosis and pre-implantation diagnosis” (http://www.humansfuture.org/genetic_engineering_designer_babies.php.htm). These right now are the methods that can be used to select the gender of the baby and to screen for any existing disease that might be genetically passed down. The technology to determine the other characteristics are still being developed and are not fully ready to be used, but they soon will be. Once the traits and characteristics are chosen the fertilized egg that has been selected is then implanted into the mother’s uterine wall and there is where the pregnancy progresses naturally. 

            This is an important issue because it can bring up many different ethical and moral issues. From the way this procedure is done to the way people are acting and trying to create “perfect” beings is ridiculous. Any way you look at it there is some kind of debate or issue surrounding designer babies. Even the positives of this can be turned into a negative; there is no place in this world for people creating other humans to be a certain way.    

            Let’s first start with a moral problem of designing babies. In order to get the perfect baby you need to have multiple embryos fertilized. When there is one that is not what you want you discard it, throw it away in the garbage. Now to many people life starts at conception, so if that is the case you are tossing away a life, a baby, just because it doesn’t “fit” your requirements. You are creating a life just to destroy it because it is not what you wanted. Even if you do not believe in life at the time of conception, don’t you believe in humanity? This is inhumane to try and create a baby, become successful in fertilizing an egg and then throwing it away. Many women have trouble getting pregnant, and many women would love the opportunity to have a child, and there are people just throwing away an embryo because it’s not male for example. How stupid and ignorant is that?

“40 states prohibit abortions, generally except when necessary to protect the woman’s life or health, after a specified point in pregnancy, most often fetal viability” (http://www.guttmacher.org/). This statement means that unless there is a fatal risk to the mother during pregnancy, abortion is not allowed. So unless there is something threatening 40 states do not let a mother abort the pregnancy. If this is the case why should it be legal for parents to throw away a fetus because it is not what they want? It is the same thing as an abortion, either way you look at it you are discarding a fetus that was fertilized and if it abortion is illegal in 40 states than how can someone allow designer babies? The way designer babies are created is unethical; there is no threat to the mother when these fetuses are being discarded, so in that case it should not be allowed.

Besides these moral issues, imagine the damage and the effect it will have on the child. There are different reasons to design a baby; 1. Because you feel like having the “perfect” child or 2. You want to save another one of your children because of disease and the only way to do that would be to make a child so that it is a genetic match. Either way this will affect the baby that is designed.

In one case you created a baby to look a certain way, to be smart and athletic, and now this child is older and finds out that he/she was designed that way. This child is going wonder if they would have been loved if it wasn’t for these traits that were selected for them. They are going to ask if they are good enough. What if the procedure on the embryo didn’t work? Instead of being athletic the child cannot even walk without tripping over his/her own two feet? Will the parents resent this child now because they aren’t the way they were supposed to be? So many questions will be running through this child’s mind. They might be scared from the fact that they were designed to be a certain way and they might be afraid they can never live up to that. Then in another instance this child can be teased by others because they are not “normal”. This child was not conceived like everyone else, they weren’t good enough the original way they would have been if conceived normally; these are things that kids can say to other kids. This child will have psychological problems due to being a designer baby.

Then there is the other reason for creating a designer baby and that is to save your other child’s life. In the case of Lisa and Jack Nash they had a daughter Molly who was diagnosed as having Fanconi anemia, this disease involves defective DNA repair and children who have this are likely to get Leukemia. They wanted to make another child which would not have this disease and would be a compatible match to Molly so they went to a doctor about having a designer baby. At first the doctor said no and then they finally found a doctor to agree and they had a son named Adam who is a perfect match to Molly. (McCabe, 203) Many families want to create children to help a child they already have, and imagine how this can affect them. They can grow up not feeling loved, or feeling like they are only there to save their sibling. They may wonder if it weren’t for their sibling being sick would their parents have even wanted them. These children then become donors beyond their own free will. They do not have a say whether or not they want to go through with a procedure because they are minors and it is whatever the parents want. Half of the procedures that some of these children go through are dangerous and can affect the rest of their lives. They may never be able to grow up having a normal life because of a procedure they went through. These children may then grow up resenting their families and parents for putting them through this. Designing a child to be a perfect match for a child you already have isn’t right. You are willingly putting one child through something they shouldn’t have to go through all to save another child’s life. What make one child’s life more valuable than the other?

Surely some people will think that designer babies are great. “I think the stakes in this argument are absurdly high, nothing less than the meaning of being human. Must we forever grow in reach and power? Or can we, should we, ever say, ‘Enough’?” (McCabe, 207) People think that it is a great thing that you can design a child to have the perfect features and put them on top of everyone else, give them advantages because they are designed to be better than a normal child. To them they don’t see the harm in advantages in their children. But how will it affect them, if one gene is altered here another one will be altered there. It is not a perfect science yet, but think about how when one thing is fixed to be better something is going to have to be worse somewhere else. And if everyone creates a child to be “perfect” and many people have the same idea of perfection, children are going to all start to look alike. They will all have similar features and they will all have similar talents and then society will all be the same. Why would anyone want to live in a world where no one is different; and then if everyone is the same it eventually defeats the purpose of making your child better than another. In the long run, everyone will be equal. Shouldn’t it just be enough to be born the way a child’s supposed to be?

Someone else might say wouldn’t you want to be able to make sure your child is born disease free? Well yeah that would be great, but you’re throwing away other embryos because they have a disease and in that case you are devaluing the life of someone with a genetic condition or disease. You are saying that if your child were to be born with disease you would not love them the same? You may not agree but you are throwing away a possible baby because it can possibly carry a disease, you are aborting a pregnancy in a sense because the baby will not be “perfect”.  

The “perfect” baby… What does that term really mean? Is it that your child is good looking, that they’re smart or athletic? Is that going to make you love your child more? When they come to you and ask am I all you ever wanted or have I let you down? What do you say to that when they aren’t what you wanted and they aren’t everything you hoped and dreamed for? When you paid thousands of dollars to have the perfect child and that isn’t what you got, it going to affect you and your child. Is a designer baby really worth the pain that can come from it when in retrospect you could have a child the normal way with no expectancies and be the happiest person on Earth? To you, your child is perfect.

Work Cited

          

            "Abortion." Guttmacher Institute:. Guttmacher Institute, Apr. 1996-2012. Web. 09 Apr. 2012. <http://www.guttmacher.org/sections/abortion.php>.

            "Designer Baby." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 July 2012. Web. 09 Apr. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designer_baby>.

            "Genetic Engineering." - Designer Babies. Humans Future, 2010. Web. 09 Apr. 2012. <http://www.humansfuture.org/genetic_engineering_designer_babies.php.htm>.

           
            McCabe, Linda L., and Edward R. B. McCabe. DNA: Promise and Peril. Berkeley: University of California, 2008. Print.

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